The American Women's Cook Book (1939): Beef cooking
POT ROAST OF BEEF
4 pounds chuck, round or rump of beef
1/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons fat
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup water
Dredge meat with flour and brown on all sides in hot fat. Season with salt and pepper. Add water, cover and cook slowly until tender, 3 to 4 hours. As the liquid cooks away add more, as needed. Serve with brown gravy and vegetables. Makes 8 portions.
Variations—1. Add uncooked pared potatoes, carrots, green beans, celery and onions just long enough before serving to cook them. They may be whole, quartered or sliced.
2. Use tomatoes or tomato juice in place of water.
3. After browning, pour 1/4 cup horse-radish over meat.
4. Before cooking, cut slits in the meat and insert stuffed
olives, pushing them into the meat.
ROAST BEEF WITH YORKSHIRE PUDDING
In preparing beef for roasting, trim it carefully then skewer and tie it into shape. Rub the lean parts with drippings and rub the whole with salt, pepper and flour.
Place the standing or rolled rib roast fat side up in an open roasting pan. Then the roast will baste itself. Insert meat thermometer so that bulb reaches the center of the largest muscle, taking care that it does not rest on the fat or bone. Roast in a slow oven (300-350° F.) or, if a brown crust is wanted, start in hot oven (500° F.) for 20 minutes, then reduce to 300° F. until done as desired. The thermometer will read 140° F. for rare, 160° F. for medium, 170° F. for well done. The time per pound needed is 18-22 minutes for rare; 22-25 for medium and 27-30 for well done. For making gravy, see page 314.
MADE GRAVY
2 small onions
1 carrot
Small piece of lean beef, size of egg or 1 beef cube or 1 teaspoon beef extract
Butter or other fat
Flour
Pepper
Salt
Catchup
Cut up onions and carrot, place them with the lean beef or extract in a stew-pan with the fat and brown all together. Add enough water to cover the mixture and stir slowly until the vegetables are cooked. Strain, thicken with flour, using two tablespoons to each cup of liquid, and add pepper, salt and catchup. Color brown with caramel or vegetable flavoring if necessary.
Yorkshire Pudding
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
Put flour, salt, milk and eggs together in a bowl. Beat well with a rotary egg-beater. Pour drippings to the depth of one inch in to a shallow pan. Have the drippings hot and pour in the mixture quickly. Bake for one-half hour in a hot oven (400°-425°F.). The pudding may then be placed under the trivet that holds the roast beef and left for about fifteen minutes to catch the gravy that flows from the roast. If a trivet is not used, cut the pudding into squares and lay them around the roast in the pan. Serve the pudding with the beef.
BEEF STEW WITH DUMPLINGS
1/4 pounds shank, neck, plate, flank, rump or brisket
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 small onion
1/3 cup cubed carrots
1/3 cup cubed turnips
4 cups potatoes, cut in quarters
Wipe meat, remove from bone, cut in cubes of about one and one-half inch. Mix flour with salt and pepper and dredge the cubes of meat with it. Cut some of the fat from the meat and heat in a frying-pan. When part of the fat has tried out, add the cubes of meat and brown the surface, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Put this meat, with the melted fat in which it was browned, into the stew-kettle. Add enough boiling water to cover the meat or a pint of tomatoes, stewed and strained, and simmer until the meat is tender (about three hours)
The carrots and turnips are to be added during the last hour of cooking, and the potatoes twenty minutes before serving time. Fifteen minutes before serving time, add the dumplings to the stew.
Dumplings—No. 1.
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 egg, well beaten
3 tablespoons melted butter or other shortening
Milk (about 2/3 cup)
Sift dry ingredients together. Add egg, melted shortening and enough milk to make a moist, stiff batter. Drop by teaspoons into boiling liquid. Cover very closely and cook for 18 minutes. Makes 2 dozen dumplings.
These dumplings may be steamed in another kettle, as in following recipe.
No. 2.
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking-powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tablespoon fat
Sift together the dry ingredients and rub in the fat. Add enough milk to moisten the flour, but do not make the mixture too wet. Roll out the dough on a board, making it about one inch thick, and cut with a biscuit cutter. Put the pieces on a plate in a steamer and steam twenty to thirty minutes. It is better not to steam the dumplings over the stew, as the rapid boiling required reduces the gravy too much. These dumplings may be cooked on top of the stew, as in the recipe above, but they will be lighter if steamed.
BEEF GOULASH
3 pounds beef chuck
Vinegar
Summer savory
1/3 cup fat
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
8 onions
Cook the onions slowly in the fat. Cut the beef into cubes or slices and sprinkle with vinegar and a little savory. Add the salt and paprika. Add the cooked onions, cover tightly, and simmer for about two hours. The liquid may be increased just before serving by the addition of a little beef stock, or cream, either sweet or sour.
BEEF LOAF
1 1/2 pounds chopped beef
2 eggs
1/4 cups bread-crumbs
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
Additional seasonings to suit, such as chopped celery or onion, poultry seasoning, a dash of thyme, savory, sage, etc.
Chop the meat. Mix it thoroughly with one unbeaten egg, bread-crumbs, chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Turn into a bread pan until almost filled. Press a hollow with spoon and drop an egg into the opening. Season, cover egg and continue to fill pan. Bake 40 minutes in hot oven (400° F.), basting every 8-10 minutes with stock or butter in hot water. Garnish with parsley or watercress and serve hot with mushroom sauce or onion sauce. It is simple to serve cold with horse-radish sauce.
BROWN SAUCE
No. 2—In making brown sauce for a roast, the simplest way is to use the fat and juice of the roast. Add two tablespoons of flour to two tablespoons of the hot drippings, stir and cook well. Then add one cup of boiling water, stir well to avoid lumps, and season to taste with salt and pepper. If liked, add a tablespoon or two of catchup or a flavoring of Worcestershire or other sauce.
MUSHROOM SAUCE
4 tablespoons fat
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups stock
1 cup mushrooms, fresh or canned
Salt and pepper
Make a brown sauce of the fat, flour and stock. Add one cup mushrooms and cook until hot. If mushrooms are over-cooked they will become tough. Three or four minutes is sufficient for those that have been canned and five or six minutes for fresh ones.
This sauce is used with any kind of roasted, broiled or braised meat, particularly with beef.
ONION SAUCE
1/2 cup minced onion
3 tablespoons fat
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon minced parsley
Cook the onion with the fat until slightly browned. Stir in the flour, then add the stock and parsley, stirring constantly. Serve with beef.
HAMBURG STEAK
2 pounds chopped beef
1/4 pound suet
Butter
Onion-juice Flour
Salt and pepper
Have the butcher chop the beef and suet together twice. Press it into a flat steak about three-fourths of an inch thick, sprinkle with salt, pepper, a little onion-juice and flour. Broil on a fine wire broiler or sauté in a little fat. Spread with butter and serve on a hot dish. This steak is sometimes shaped into small, thin, flatcakes. When it is sautéd, a gravy may be made by thickening the juices in the pan, to which a little water has been added. Two tablespoons of melted butter and one tablespoon minced onion mixed with the meat and seasonings improves Hamburg steak.
BAKED HAMBURG STEAK
1/4 pounds chopped beef
2 cups bread soaked in milk
1 small onion, minced
1 tablespoon butter or other fat
2 eggs
4 hard-cooked eggs
1 cup tomatoes
1/2 cup sliced onion
Salt, pepper, ginger
Have the meat put through the grinder twice. Add the bread, the onion, seasonings to taste and the two uncooked eggs, well-beaten. Arrange the hard-cooked eggs end to end across the middle of the meat and roll the meat mixture around them. Place the roll in a baking-pan, pour over it a sauce composed of the tomatoes, sliced onions, butter or other fat and water, and bake in moderate oven (350°-375° F.) for about two hours, basting frequently with sauce. In serving, slice the roll crosswise. The hard-cooked eggs may be omitted.
BEEF BALLS
1 1/2 pounds beef from the shank
1/3 cup bread-crumbs
3 tablespoons soft fat
1 cup stock
1 egg
Flour
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon lemon-juice
Nutmeg
Put the meat twice through a food-chopper, add bread-crumbs, salt, pepper, lemon-juice, a little nutmeg and the beaten egg. Shape into balls lightly and let them stand for half an hour or more to become firm, then roll them in flour and brown them in the frying-pan with the fat. Take out the meat balls, add to the fat a tablespoon of flour and a cup of stock. Season well, put the meat balls into this mixture, cover the frying-pan closely and simmer for an hour and a half.
© Trevor Dailey